"Live, Learn, Apply & Educate!": October 2012

Monday, October 29, 2012

How to login to OBIEE 11g with User and Password hardcoded URL?

If you would like to just login with URL into OBIEE 11g content, you can hardcode the URL and not have to worry about it anymore. The ingredients are below. The content in red indicates your input to your specific environment:

http://hostname:7001/analytics/saw.dll?answers&NQuser=username&NQpassword=Password

i.e. if your hostname is localhost; where you would like to login: answers, dashboard; username: weblogic, password: Admin123. The complete URL in this case will be:
http://localhost:7001/analytics/saw.dll?dashboard&NQuser=weblogic&NQpassword=Admin123Hope this helped!

How to Enable / Disable Recent Files List in Windows 7 Taskbar Jump List

First to edit the number of files shown in that list:

1. Right Click in your start menu and chose Properties
2. Click on Customize button under Start Menu tab
3. You'll get the Customize Start Menu dialog, at the bottom of which you will see the Start menu size section where you can set a new value for Number of recent items to display in Jump Lists
3. Set your preferred value and click on OK twice to apply the settings

Note that setting Number of recent items to display to 0 will remove the recent files list from taskbar, but still store your recent files at the back-end. So that you can restore it later.

To completely disable this feature:

1. Right Click in your start menu and chose Properties
2. Under Privacy section, You can find Store and display recently opened items in the Start Menu and the Taskbar check box. Uncheck it.
3. Click on OK to apply the settings.

Hope it helped!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

OBIEE 11g OBI Server and Presentation Cache Management

Oracle BI Server Cache Management

BI server could be leveraged by multiple users and reports depending on whether they are accessing similar or subset of the cached data, though from a different reports.
To purge OBI Server cache the best-practice is to set it as automated process after completing ETL, because if we set the auto-purge at specified time, but for some reason ETL fails, the BI Server cache gets purged and all user queries will have to get executed all over, which will impact the BI Server performance.

To complete this task, please follow these steps:
Create a text file called: PurgeAllCache.txt and save it in C:\ (easier to remember)
Open and type the following: Call SAPurgeAllCache()
Save and Close.
Create another text file called: PurgeCache.txt (we will later convert this file into batch file .bat) and save it in C:\
Go to: \Oracle_BI\bifoundation\server\bin\nqcmd.exe and make sure you see the file DO NOT run it.
Copy and paste the nqcmd.exe file directory somewhere temporary

This is a ODBC client that runs commands

Now, go to: Start > All Programs > Administrative Tools > Data Sources (ODBC)
Click on System DSN tab and locate Oracle BI Server 11g_XXXXX > click on Configure…
Copy and paste the Name: with nqcmd.exe file path for now. The ODBC name in this case is: coreapplication_OH905911364
Cancel to close Oracle BI Server and ODBC windows.
Open PurgeCache.txt and type the following:

Echo off
\Oracle_BI\bifoundation\server\bin\nqcmd.exe -d coreapplication_905911364 -u weblogic -p password -s C:\PurgeAllCache.txt

Make sure this command is ALL IN ONE LINE

Echo

Explnation:

\Oracle_BI\bifoundation\server\bin\nqcmd.exe [nqcmd.exe file path]
-d coreapplication_905911364 [my DSN ODBC name]
-u weblogic [-u BI Admin Username]
-p password [-p BI Admin Password]
-s C:\PurgeAllCache.txt [-s SQL Input File to execute]

Save and Close.
Change PurgeCache.txt into PurgeCache.bat this will convert the file into executable file.
Now run couple of analysis in OBIEE.
Open the RPD in an Online mode:
Go to: Manage > Cache - and you'll see recent saved cache.
Now run PurgeCache.bat and recheck the RPD Cache, you will see that it is cleaned :).

Oracle BI Presentation Cache Management

When users run analyses, Presentation Services can cache the results of those analyses. Presentation Services determines if subsequent analyses can use cached results. If the cache can be shared, then subsequent analyses are not stored.
The files for the Presentation Services cache have names such as nQS_xxxx_x_xxxxxx.TMP.
The files are created by the ODBC driver but generally do correspond to ODBC requests that the Presentation Services cache keeps open. The files are stored in the following directory:

ORACLE_INSTANCE\tmp\OracleBIPresentationServices\coreapplication_obipsn\obis_temp

The files for the cache are removed whenever Presentation Services shuts down cleanly. If Presentation Services shuts down unexpectedly, then various cache files might be left on disk. You can delete the files when Presentation Services is not running.
The Presentation Services cache is not the same cache that is accessed by the Oracle BI Server. You can change the defaults for the Presentation Services cache by modifying the instanceconfig.xml file to include the cache entries.

i.e. if the requirement is to set the cache to expire every 15 minutes; open to edit the instanceconfig.xml for OBI Presentation Services and add the following :
Your code should look like this:
Save and Close the file.

Alternative Cache Management Techniques

Open BI Administration Tool > Open the RPD
Go to: Physical table properties
Check: Checkeable and choose as appropriate

Cache never expires - self-explanatory
Cache persistence time - specify how often the table should purge the cache

Note: this implies only to this table and is not the best-techniques when you are working with 100s of tables.

Friday, October 5, 2012

OBIEE 10g vs 11g

NQSconfig.INI File Path:

OBIEE 10g: OracleBI/server/Config

OBIEE 11G: ORACLE_INSTANCE/config/OracleBIServerComponent/coreapplication_obisn

Repository (.rpd) Encryption:

OBIEE 10g - certain sensitive elements within a repository are encrypted.
OBIEE 11g - entire repository is encrypted using a key derived from a user supplied password. An 11g repository can ONLY be opened with the password, and there is no mechanism to recover a lost password.

Defining Users and Groups –

OBIEE 10g - it was possible to define users and groups within a repository file using the Oracle BI Administration tool.
OBIEE 11g - users and groups are defined and set from Admin Console

You can no longer define users and groups within a repository. The Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Upgrade Assistant migrates users and groups from a 10g repository into the embedded LDAP server in an 11g installation.